Material experiments

… of my very own aute (paper mulberry – Broussonetia papyrifera)

At the very end of our coffee plantation, right next to the bananas and near the underground stream, Juergen has planted my three paper mulberry plants from Rarotonga. After a year and a half, I decide that they are old enough to harvest. What I really hope is that after harvesting, the plants will produce new shoots and that way I can eventually get a small plantation growing.

I had no time to look after these three plants and nip off the side branches, so the bark will not be of good quality. The plants have grown wild, the branches are all over the place, and the plants have not grown very high either. My Tongan, Samoan, Fijian and Hawaiian friends will probably laugh their heads off at this sight… I have cut all slightly thicker branches and stems. When I put them on the ground and sit down on a stool to start preparing the bark, I soon discover that I have an excellent helper (see above). I’m sure that Max shares my opinion: It’s not really worth wasting my time on this…

I cut the best parts anyway and scrape off their outer bark, just for the sake of doing it. It is important to get rid of all the brown and green and keep only the white bast, however there’s not much of it there at all. What remains is laughable. I pull it off, roll it up and freeze it anyway, maybe I can use it for some project…

There are beautiful new plants sprouting from the aute‘s root system. I promise myself that this time I will look after them better and have more and better bark for harvesting next time. For my new project, I will have to use, yet again, tapa which I have imported for the purpose.

A sail can be defined as a large piece of strong cloth that can catch the wind to move a vessel or vehicle forward.[1] Sails, affixed to single hull and double hull voyaging canoes, were instrumental in the discovery and population of the Pacific islands. Their form reflected in infinite variety the imagination and experimentations of the different peoples who explored the vast extensions of the Pacific ocean and populated their countless islands.[2]

Most of their sails were triangular, attached to v-shaped spars. They were made of vegetable material such as pandanus which was plaited in strips and might have been sewn together with cord twined from bark fibres such as oronga (Touchardia latifolia) or au (Hibiscus tiliaceus).

Even though the wooden and later iron sailing ships of seafaring European explorers differed hugely from the well-balanced Pacific islands catamarans, their square or triangular cloth sails were also shaped to accommodate the play of wind and water forces. Like the Edna, they had many differently shaped sails.

Sailcloth, also called ‘duck’, derived from the Dutch word for cloth = doek, was woven from strong flax or hemp, and in the 19th century, cotton fibres[3]. Today, most sails are made of synthetic materials[4].

Spirit

Spirit – from Latin spiritus = soul, courage, vigor, breath[5] – can be considered the non-material, the essence, the animating force that brings a body to life, the energy that propels us forward (French: l’esprit), the in-spiration that gives a project momentum, the a-spiration that causes us to reach a goal. Spirit is synonymous with psyche, soul, and in some languages such as my own (spirit in German = Geist) with mind. Spirit is “the self-supporting absolutely real ultimate being (Wesen = essence).”[6]

What would a Spirit Sail have to look like?

In my “quest for the perfect shape” of this ‘spirit sail’ I learn that “[t]here is no such thing as the best sail shape – there are countless different “best” shapes, depending on the wind, waves, boat type & size, even weather & air temperature.”[7] Duh, no help here! I guess, it will be entirely up to my imagination.

So: what do I want it to look like?

it should have a preferably universal sail shape to be recognizable as a sail

it should be transparent to refer to the spirit’s invisibility

it should be delicate without being frail to hint at spiritual acuity

it should be visible in daylight and at night-time to symbolise the infinity of spirit

it should be textile – textile signifying for me both text and touch

it should be large enough to be seen from afar and small enough to be made in my studio

I will use the materials that I have brought and will still bring in touch with the Edna’s remains. I ordered Polymer ribbon that glows in the dark after having been exposed to UV light. I am awaiting textile heat-set paint medium to experiment with rare earth pigments that have the same effect.

From photographs I could gather that both the Edna and our Cook Islands Vaka (double-hull voyaging canoe) “Marumaru Atua” use(d) a jib. Consequently my spirit sail will have a jib-like triangular shape. Based on the dimensions of the Edna, a suitable jib’s longest side would have to be some 12 m long. However my sail will not have to be functional and for practical reasons I will make it half that size which is more manageable considering work space and materials.

Lessons

My first experiment relates to the woven strips that Pacific islands sails were made of. I tear two of my rust-impregnated fabrics into strips and weave them together.

The double layer of woven strips will make the resulting cloth strong. Once finish I realize that the cloth, being much softer than dried pandanus strips of course, does not hold together all that well when woven in strips.

The weaving needs to be strengthened by sewing the layers together so that the sample can keep up its shape under the stress of movement. First lesson learned.

I decide that I don’t want to paint a design on to my sail, but I don’t just want it to be plain either. I want the design to develop from the way I manipulate the various materials, be it their shape or their colour or both. Both waves and the airflow that propels a sail forward create vortices[8]. This has inspired me to use the spiral as my spirit sail’s symbol.

Machine-sewn lace techniques will give my sail certain transparency. My next sample uses some of the torn-fabric strings, with which I have bound materials to the Edna’s remains, as basic material.

The ironed strips are pinned to soluble stabilizer to stay in place while joining them together. The stabilizer will eventually be washed out once the sewing is finished.

The wet season has started and I learn my second lesson: Fabric that has been soaked in salt water – as have all the fabrics that touched the Edna – needs to be washed until all salt has been washed out! I was too lazy to do so and now find that the salty fabric soaks up moisture from the air. The moist fabric makes the water-soluble (!) stabilizer sticky and nearly impossible to work with!

I cannot use the free-form technique I had in mind but I get there in the end…

In this sample I incorporate small pieces of the fairly expensive luminous ribbon just to try it out. The material is very rubbery and not exactly easy to sew through. My machine skips a few stitches here and there. I learn my third lesson: I need to reduce the speed when sewing over the ribbon.

I am happy with the way it glows in the dark. The ribbon certainly has potential and offers me more design possibilities.

Photoshop

There are endless possibilities for patterning the sail. The two sewing samples are only the start. I use Photoshop and play with their photos to get an idea of what can be done.

I have brought a new piece of Banyan bark, this time only just beaten to become flexible enough to wrap it around the magic frame. Like the previous piece, as soon as I wrap the bark around the metal, the blackening process begins. I love that magic!

I have also wrapped a piece of eucalyptus-dyed gauze on the outside, part of which just sits on the metal, the other part covering the tapa. I want to find out, whether the area that covers the tapa will be dyed a different colour, i.e. whether the tapa’s own ‘juice’ leaves a trace.

The weather is not so wonderful and I’m in a hurry, so I just drive to the beach and bring the frame back to unwrap at home. What I find is quite photogenic.

Yes, the tapa has added some brown colour to my gauze. Where it has just touched the metal it is only a mottled gray.

The dried bark keeps its shape as I carefully peel it off the frame. I should leave it as is and use it as a sculptural piece…

However, my intention is to soak the dried bark and beat it until it is as thin as possible. I’m glad we live way outside the village, because it is a Sunday morning when I sit down to do that. I just hope the lovely sound of my tutunga (wooden anvil) will not be heard in church…

I fold the strip lengthwise and beat it, beat it, beat it, unfold and refold it and keep beating some more until I run the risk of ripping it with the next beats. Only then am I satisfied.

In its wet state, the tapa’s colours are rich; they will fade a bit as the bark dries.

The material is thin and see through. One can clearly see the marks the ridges of the ike (beater) have left behind. I had hoped that I could perhaps beat tapa and gauze together, but that hasn’t worked out. I feel tempted now to experiment some more with gauze…

Like this:

Excited and curious, Kareen and I return to Ava Tapu beach. Will the frame still be there? I don’t really feel like digging it out of the sand again. I would be sad to have lost such a valuable piece of rust. Does that sound strange? One (wo)man’s trash is this rust dyer’s treasure… As we descend I am relieved to see the boomerang-like shape of the frame still stuck in Edna’s bow. The bark has dried and is stuck to the frame. Untying the knots in the builders line is a fiddly job.

I carefully peel the thin bark off the rusty metal. The coloring is so wonderful, ranging from yellow to rusty-brown with black stains where the frame has made contact with the soaked bark. The frame’s protruding screws have moulded the bark and embossed their shape into the material. Do I really want to beat it again?

I like the bizarre, flame-like shape the tapa has now. Held against the light we can appreciate how thin the bark is. It is firm and yet soft to the touch. What must it have been like to wear such bark as a garment?

Even the “dont-remove tape” has acquired new colours in all shades of the rainbow. The wash-away frame has become my favourite rusting tool. I wrap it with a new piece of cloth to have something to look forward to when I come back next time.

I have taken a piece of banyan tapa out of the freezer to thaw. It was harvested and wrapped in ti leaves (Cordiline terminalis) when we did the tapa making workshop with the senior art students at Enuamanu School a year ago. Keeping some samples of bark was my ‘payment’ for filming the event. I have never frozen fresh bark and am all curious how the bark feels to the touch and how it will be to beat it.

Freshly harvested bark is tough at first. I can see from the discolorations that it must be a piece that has been buried in the sea during last year’s experiments. I notice with the first beats that this bark is beautifully soft and requires much less strength to “crack open”, i.e. loosen the fibres. It means I got to be careful not to beat too hard so as not to produce holes right away. My intention is just to beat it a little bit and then take it down to Ava Tapu beach to affix it to a part of the Edna. Having this amazingly soft piece of banyan on my tutunga (wooden anvil) carries me away and I go on until it is nearly finished.

I try out a new technique of folding the bark length-wise so that I end up with beating a parcel of fibres. I would love to beat it thinner, but stop right here. I might moisten it again and beat it some more after it has been in contact with Edna.

It amazes me to return the bark to this same beach under whose coral boulders it had been buried last year. Little idea did I have then of the journey this tapa would undertake. Bringing it back to the Edna now is only the beginning of a new phase…

We have just uncovered the “wash-away frame”. It will be a wonderful piece of the Edna to do its magic with this tapa piece. I wrap my “don’t remove tape” around the frame as well to secure the tapa as best I can.

I can’t believe my eyes when the colouration is almost instant at the contact with the salt-water-soaked tapa. This time I place it high up on Edna’s bow, wedging it into a hole and hoping that the sea won’t steal it. Will it be there tomorrow? What will it look like then?

In search for rusty bits and pieces that will help me dye fabrics, I wander into the bow of the Edna. She welcomes and rewards me instantly. I find this amazing frame with protruding screws on both sides that promise me regular rusty dots – my inner eye can just see them…

I drag the frame to the front where I have placed the collections of “fabrics of the day” and some lengths of builders line. There is better light here and some coral boulders that serve me as work tables and chairs. Soon the frame is safely wrapped with salt-water-soaked cotton fabric and bound tightly.

The sea has been calm. I decide to place the frame in front of Edna’s bow, high up on the beach in the sand in order to let the frame’s weight add some extra pressure to the fabric for better marking.

When I return the next day, I am shocked. According to my time calculations it should be low tide and the sea calm. Instead high waves are still breaking on the bottom of Ava Tapu beach and – my precious frame has disappeared! Disappointed I scan the beach area.

Eventually I find a small cloth surface that protrudes through the pieces of coral and sand, buried between two heavy boulders right by the edge of the sea some ten meters or so away from where I had placed the wrapped frame. With a stick I try to dig it out but to no avail. I mark the area with my digging stick, just in case. I will have to return with a shovel. Normally I power-walk down to the beach which I will certainly not do with a shovel on my shoulder…!

Kareen, a new friend, arrives to stay with us for a week. I have seen on her blog that she is an excellent photographer. Kareen offers to help me with the digging so we take the car down to the beach.

When I look for my mark it has – of course – disappeared. After some searching I glimpse a rusty fabric patch under a different boulder and the digging can begin in serious. Sand and water have sucked and pushed the wrapped frame deep under.

The two of us take turns in digging, scraping, pulling and photographing until we are finally rewarded with some movement. The frame’s sides have come unwrapped. Both have broken shorter.

The fabric has acquired beautiful patterns of all shades from black to orange. The material seems intact with the exception of a few holes. Like sand-washed jeans, I think. If ever I want to ‘age’ fabric artificially, now I know what to do: bury it in the sand at Ava Tapu beach.

After some more digging we can grab at the fabric and pull, pull hard and – yay! Finally the sand releases the frame and its wrapping cloth.

I can’t wait to untie the knots to release the fabric. What a delight of colours!

It is just the right light this late afternoon.

The sand needs washing out.

The sun paints patterns on the floating fabric.

It is low tide, the sea and the sky are of a deep blue. Orange growth on the reef echoes the colours of Edna’s new cloth.

A rainy day in between prevents me from returning after 24 hours and gives my experiment some more time to show results.

Wow! I have not expected such amazing confirmation of my theory that the reaction of tannin with the iron oxide, which is possibly contained in Banyan barkcloth, will produce black discolouration.

Not only am I rewarded with deep black rust stains, even a pattern has formed where the strings have pressed the bark firmly against Edna’s magic rusty rod. This now makes me wonder what would happen, if I wound a freshly beaten strip around the magic rod? I still have some unbeaten bark in the freezer which I will use for that next experiment. How exciting! Watch this space…